Description

Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine is a platform game, the fifth in the Commander Keen series as a whole, and the second in the second series Goodbye, Galaxy.

Eight-year-old genius Billy "Commander Keen" Blaze, having learnt about the alien Shikadi's plans to destroy the galaxy, arrives on board of their ship, the Omegamatic, in order to destroy it and prevent the evil deed. The objective is to reach and destroy the core of the Omegamatic, but before this happens, Billy must find and destroy four machines which protect the main elevator.

The game begins with a top-down map of the Omegamatic. This is the level select screen, where Billy can walk around and the player can choose the next level they want to enter. On each level, Billy has to either make your way to the exit, or destroy a vital machine if there is one on this level. Once a level is completed, Billy ends up back on the overhead map.

The levels are full of enemies, mostly robots of various kinds. There are also many deadly hazards. If Keen gets shot or touched by an enemy, or falls into a pit or touches something hazardous, he dies and loses one life.

Thankfully, Keen can stun most enemies with his raygun. He also carries a pogo stick which allows him to jump very high. Other items to find include: ammo, gems and keycards that are needed to open locked doors, bonus items which give score, jars of "Vitalin" (100 of them give an extra life) and the rare Keg O' Vitalin which gives an extra life.

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Trivia

Alternate ending

There is an alternate ending for this game. If you can get to the Secret Korath III Base, you'll find a fuse which can be broken by pogo-ing on it. Thus when the shikadi try to escape in the end, a different page appears that tells you their ship didn't start and they were arrested by the Korath III police for double parking.

Development

CGA version

As with the previous title in the series, a CGA exclusive version of the game exists, although it's extremely difficult to find.

CGA Composite

In 2016 VileR released an unofficial patch that allowed the CGA version of the game to use the CGA Composite mode. This results in CGA 16 colors graphics, as opposed of the CGA 4 color graphics of the original release.

References

There are several jokes in the game that relate back to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. According to the book, a nice hot cup of tea is said to be a Brownian Motion inducer. One level is called the "Brownian Motion Inducer". When you get to the machine at the end of the level, you can see a cup of tea being stirred inside.

Featured in the game are small green bottles of liquid that when you pick up they say 'v'... This refers to the fictitious energy drink Vitalin that Tom Hall created. Years later, Vitalin was used in John Romero'sRavenwood Fair game.

Swastika

Another easter egg (but far more controversial) which can be found only on some versions is the representation of a swastika with pipes. This can be found on level 4 (go down the 1st pole, then left, then right after the short drop and finally look down (press down)) and was immediately deleted of all subsequent versions (although some say it resurfaced when GT re-released the series).